Pompeii, poverty, power and purpose
In early September, Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den (May 2021), already shortlisted in the Pageturner category of the British Book Awards, was announced as the winner of the 2022 Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award. The novel, the first in a trilogy, follows the fortunes of Amara, a once-beloved daughter who has lived as a slave...
The women who save you
The success of a journey depends on your fellow travellers. The poems in Night Feeds and Morning Songs remind me that we are not alone. Women walked and will walk this way, with their babies cocooned in their buggies or bound to their chests, hundreds of years ago, and yesterday, and tomorrow. They have wiped...
Kitchen
What would you do if I died right now, here, you asked. Your hand still resting on my thigh. Your eyes focused on the ceiling – on the splash of curry sauce to the left of the light which doesn’t work. We could have been in a field. A wooden spoon dug into my back....
Oyinkan Braithwaite: Blood sisters
If the title hasn’t already won you over, the opening lines hook you right in: “Ayoola summons me with these words – Korede, I killed him. I had hoped I would never hear those words again.” Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel My Sister, the Serial Killer is a pacy, macabre and very funny gallop through the...
Wedding plans
Mrs Binat’s ambitions for her daughters were fairly typical: groom them into marriageable material and wed them off to no less than princes and presidents. Before their fall, her husband had always assured her that, no matter what a mess Alys or any of the girls became, they would fare well because they were Binat...
Pride, prejudice and parathas
When I was fourteen years old, my Aunt Helen gave me my first Jane Austen novel, a beautiful red and gold hardback of Pride and Prejudice. I remember climbing onto my bed one summer afternoon in Lahore, the heat tempered by the roar of the AC, and settling down with this new read. It is...
